Government scientists signed a deal which bought the silence of GE-free
campaigners over a botched plant trial in Northland.

The groups GE Free NZ and GE Free Northland were muzzled by the deal,
in return for a clean-up of a tamarillo-testing area by HortResearch.

The deal followed criticism by the Royal Commission On Genetic Modification
of the trial, carried out near Kerikeri.

Scientists at HortResearch publicly announced in October they would
sterilise the tamarillo site with poisons after fears GE material had remained
in the soil.

But the Sunday Star-Times has discovered they agreed to go ahead with
the poisoning plan only after GE Free NZ signed an agreement to keep quiet.

In a copy of the agreement, obtained by the Star-Times, the scientists
demanded GE Free NZ withdraw requests it had made to another agency for
help in cleaning up the site.

They also wanted the group to stop making complaints and criticising
the tamarillo trial in public.

The document stated: "GE Free (NZ) and GE Free Northland will not initiate
any further criticism of HortResearch, concerning this trial, to the media
or any other party."

Dr John Shaw, HortResearch science general manager, said the deal had
been done to protect the reputation of the crown agency. "(Our concern)
was the potential to bring the HortResearch name into disrepute. We felt
pretty strongly about that."

The genetically engineered tamarillos were designed to be resistant
to a virus, the presence of which affects export opportunities. The trial
was approved before the new regulatory body came in, and faced less controls.

The commission found there were "justified" public fears about efforts
made to contain the tamarillos and recognised concerns over horizontal
gene transfer which can spread altered DNA between species.

The commission report instructed "all material associated with the trial
must be removable from the site".

Shaw admitted tamarillo roots were still in the ground, adding HortResearch
had never checked to see if genetically altered organisms had crossed into
plants and soil. "We never tested it. Our belief was that there was no
risk. The plants would have been pulled out and not all the root material
would have come out.

"But what's the chance of it hopping from one little rootlet to another
system? The risk of it is extremely low. It is never absent, but it is
so low it is not a concern."

Zelka Grammer, from GE Free Northland in Food & Environment, said
the deal was signed because farmers were eager to stop any potential spread
of GE organisms. Plans to sterilise the ground never went ahead after soil
scientists said the poison - chloropicrin - could actually help spread
GE organisms.

The organisation now wanted funding to pay a group of independent scientists
from New Zealand universities to test the soil.

"I think it's a cover-up, all right. They're involved and of course
they are ducking for cover," Grammer said.

Dr Paul Hutchison, MP and national spokesman on crown research institutes,
was critical of the deal and called for scientific tests on the soil to
resolve the argument. "It sounds very, very scurrilous to me. I feel surprised
that HortResearch would have done that."

Pete Hodgson, minister of crown research institutes, said he had no
problem with HortResearch signing the deal.

"CRIs operate as commercial companies and they operate under the Companies
Act. They are entitled to secure contracts within New Zealand."

Marian Hobbs, minister for the environment, said she would carry out
a fresh inquiry into the tamarillo trial to discover if her office could
assist.

Environment Minister Marian Hobbs says it is "not possible" to make
scientific checks on the soil at a Northland site where a Crown science
company grew genetically modified tamarillos.

Ms Hobbs said yesterday that she had previously said there should be
research into the effect of genetically modified organisms on soil.

"But that research should be properly planned and conducted on a scientifically
sound basis.

"It is not possible to do such work at Kerikeri now," she said. "We
needed to understand the soil make-up before the plantings, so we could
compare it afterwards."

When a spokesman for the minister was asked how the lack of a baseline
study stopped the Government from paying for a straightforward analysis
of whether the engineered DNA sequence had spread into soil organisms,
he said no such study was proposed.

Instead, the minister was saying it would not be possible to compare
the "before and after" soil communities, he said.

Last October, National's spokesman on Crown research institutes, Paul
Hutchison, asked Ms Hobbs to fund an analysis of the soil.

She told him she had received no request from HortResearch for soil
analysis.

And it was too late to assess the state of soil organisms before the
GM trial or whether there had been any "transient effects", she said then.

Dr Hutchison, the MP for Port Waikato, said yesterday that he had wanted
Ms Hobbs to pay for an assessment of whether engineered DNA had spread
into soil organisms or remained in the soil in plant roots.

But Ms Hobbs said the Environmental Risk Management Authority had concluded
there appeared to be no need for testing the soil.

Several community groups critical of the experiment have over the past
two years called for such tests, and Dr Hutchison said yesterday that the
Government had condoned efforts by HortResearch to gag criticism of its
genetically modified tamarillos.

HortResearch last year had agreed to fumigate its tamarillo test site
on the condition that two groups of critics, GE-Free NZ and GE-Free Northland
stop initiating criticism of HortResearch over the trial.

Ms Hobbs yesterday suggested that misgivings expressed last year by
the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification over the GM tamarillo trial
would not have arisen had it been conducted under present controls.

The commission last year told the Government that it had heard "considerable
public doubt" about the adequacy of the containment of a field trial of
transgenic tamarillos at HortResearch's Northland research station.

HortResearch began research into GM tamarillos at Kerikeri in
January 1998, to test whether tamarillo plants could be immunised against
mosaic virus.

The plant resisted the virus - which has affected about 90 per cent
of New Zealand's small tamarillo crop - and fruited well, and the experiment
concluded in January last year.

The trial of 40 GM tamarillos covered about a third of the 0.2ha field
and involved four rows of plants.

About half the plants in the middle rows were transgenic, while the
rest were non-transgenic.